E-Mail Marketing is not rocket science, but most companies who start e-mail marketing campaigns don’t have success.  Here are six tips for professional, service-oriented businesses to make your e-mail blasts effective and profitable.

Be Detailed.

The fastest way to lose people from your e-mail list is to send a sales pitch. Most people don’t pay attention to commercials on tv, and they certainly don’t want to see them in their inbox. Instead of a hard selling advertisement, offer your readers information that they will find relevant and useful. Highlight new trends in your industry or how new products might improve their lives. You also might want to highlight staff achievements or testimonials from clients that your e-mail recipients will relate to.

Focus on the details. The details are what separate you from your competitors and help your customers trust your product. Don’t just say you have a high quality product or service, show them one aspect of your offerings in detail that makes the case for you. If you are a furniture manufacturer, show a photo of the intricate carvings on a table leg and explain the craftsmanship that goes into the product. If you are a real estate agent, show a photo of a staged home and explain how that extra effort can make the sale.

Be Concise.

Don’t lose your audience. Most people read e-mail on mobile devices like blackberries and iphones. And even if they read e-mails on their desktop, the e-mail preview may take up only a small portion of their monitor space. Time is precious and your reader is being pulled in multiple directions all day. If your e-mail is too long they may put it off for later, never to see it again. Remember, your first sell is not the product you are pitching but the e-mail you are enticing them to read.

Show a photo related to your content and a paragraph or two explaining the details. If you need to write more, link to your website for “the rest of the story”.

Some marketers will disagree with me, but I believe in a professional environment, your e-mail marketing should only have a few topics, especially if you send them out more than once a month. Save the lengthy copy for your website or product manuals. Think about how busy you are during the day and how much time you spend reading e-mail. Use that as your guide to determine how much content is appropriate for your audience.

Be Consistent.

Think about your day. When you get to work, do you follow through the same routine every morning? Do you check the same websites or newspapers in a pattern? People, especially Internet users, are habitual by nature and feel more comfortable with some structure and pattern. So pick a schedule for your e-mail marketing and stick to it. Whether its bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly, do so with the same frequency every time you send the message. And don’t just make the time between the message consistent, make the time of day and day of the week consistent as well.

Consistency isn’t just important with your publishing schedule, it is important with your style too. Keep your branding and e-mail template the same. Your e-mail template is your electronic letterhead. You wouldn’t send a customer a letter on letterhead one week, and on notebook paper the next. Time Magazine doesn’t change their logo and cover layout with every issue. Only the content and the photos change so the reader becomes familiar with the source and recognizes the brand.

Be Lawful.

The fine for violating The CAN-SPAM Act can be $16,000 per occurrence, so it is your responsibility to send compliant e-mails. The CAN-SPAM Act requirements are also good business practices, so you should follow them even if there wasn’t a hefty fine looming over head.

For most businesses, following The CAN-SPAM Act is simple.

• Include your company name and physical address
• Allow people to easily opt-out by clicking a link or replying to the message
• The only thing someone has to provide to opt-out is their e-mail address
• No fees, no surveys, no phone calls can be required before allowing a reader to opt-out

And if someone does call you and request to be removed from your list.  Do so promptly.

Call To Action.

Every e-mail needs a call to action. Most often this is a link to additional content or information, but it could also be a survey, a contest, a chance to forward the message or follow-up in person. No matter what the call to action is, you need it in order to track the effectiveness of your message.

Track The Results.

You can’t improve your marketing efforts or capitalize on success if you don’t know how your message is being received. Fortunately, tracking the results of your e-mail campaigns is simple with popular e-mail services such as iContact, Constant Contact or Mail Chimp.

Track open rates, opt-out rates, click-thru rates, forward rates, and if your e-mail has been reported as spam. Compare these results to previous e-mails to analyze your success. If many more people are clicking on links or forwarding to friends, then you have hit on a hot issue that might warrant additional focus on your website or blog. Conversely if few people are taking action from your e-mail or even opening the message, then you probably need to work on the message and the product you are trying to sell.

You also need to pay close attention to your bounce rates and know which e-mails were actually bounced. Use the bounce-list as an opportunity to personally contact customers who didn’t receive your e-mail and make sure their contact details are up to date. This is a good excuse to connect to someone you may not have spoken with in a while and get your company back to the forefront of their mind.